Why Is It Necessary For The Federal Government To Turn The United States Into A Prison Camp?

The American people need to let their voices be heard on these issues.  If not, the federal government will continue to strip away our privacy, our liberties and our freedoms until everything is gone.

hawaiinewsdaily.com | Apr 20, 2012

By Michael Snyder

There has been no society in the history of the world that has ever been 100% safe.  No matter how much money the federal government spends on “homeland security”, the truth is that bad things will still happen.  Our world is a very dangerous place and it is becoming increasingly unstable.  The federal government could turn the entire country into one giant prison camp, but that would still not keep us safe.  It is inevitable that bad stuff will happen in life.  But we have a choice.  We can choose to live in fear or we can choose to live as free men and women.  Our forefathers intended to establish a nation where liberty and freedom would be maximized.  But today we are told that we have to give up our liberties and our freedoms and our privacy for increased security. 

But is such a trade really worth it?  Just think of the various totalitarian societies that we have seen down throughout history.  Have any of them ever really thrived?  Have their people been happy?  Unfortunately, the U.S. federal government has decided that the entire country needs to be put on lock down.  Nearly everything that we do today is watched and tracked, and personal privacy is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  Many of the things that George Orwell wrote about in 1984 are becoming a reality, and that is a very frightening thing.  The United States is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Sadly, we are rapidly becoming the exact opposite of that.

I don’t know about you, but I never signed up to live in North Korea.  When I was growing up I was taught that repressive regimes such as North Korea are “the bad guys” and that America is where “the good guys” live.

So why do we want to be just like North Korea?

When they put in the naked body scanners at U.S. airports and started having TSA agents conduct “enhanced pat-downs” of travelers, I decided that I was not going to fly anymore unless absolutely necessary.

Then I heard about how “random bag checks” were being conducted at Metro train stations in the Washington D.C. area, and I was glad that I was no longer taking the train into D.C. anymore.

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But now the TSA is showing up everywhere.  Down in Houston, undercover TSA agents and police officers will now “ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior.”

So now I have another thing to add to my list of things that I can’t do anymore.

No more riding buses for me.

But the truth is that you can’t escape this expanding security grid no matter how hard you try.

In fact, TSA “VIPR teams” conduct approximately 8,000 “unannounced security screenings” every year at bus terminals, train stations, ports and highway rest stops throughout the United States.

Look, every society needs some level of security.  There are always bad guys out there that want to harm innocent people.

But in the United States we must demand that those in charge of our security do their jobs in a way that does not compromise our dignity, our liberties or our freedoms.

Does having TSA thugs touch the private parts of old women and young children before they get on their flights keep us any safer?

Of course not.

But it does move our country in a very dangerous direction.

The reality is that this “Big Brother control grid” that is being constructed all around us is expanding in a thousand different ways.

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“Coldest May in 100 years”, forecasters predict

A family walk in the snow in the Brecon Beacons, south Wales Photo: Tim Ireland/PA

Britain could be facing the coldest May for 100 years, with snow, bitter winds and freezing temperatures putting summer on hold.

Telegraph | Apr 19, 2012

The winter weather follows a wet start to April, with the threat of floods and storms to come over the next few days.

The Met Office has issued weather warnings for the South West, London, South East, Wales and the West of England due to flooding on roads and 60mph winds.

Hail storms are expected across the country and it is feared windows could be broken by giant hail, up to 1cm thick. In the north and Scotland temperatures could fall to -2C.

Despite the ongoing drought, heavy downpours could cause localised flooding, even in areas where there is hosepipe ban in place.

Independent forecaster WeatherAction has also predicted the next month will be the “coldest or near coldest for 100 years” in the East of England, with cold northwesterly winds.

Cairngorm ski resort in Scotland is open, although most of the other centres remain closed, as snow falls on the high ground.

An unsettled front coming in from the Atlantic is causing the combination of storms and sunshine across most the county.

The heaviest rain will be in the west at the beginning of the week before the Atlantic weather system moves over the east of the country bringing downpours to the drought-stricken areas of the UK.

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Most of the east of England is in drought, from the Humber down to the Kent coast, and across the Midlands and the South West. Seven water companies in the south and east have brought in hosepipe bans.

Another wet weather front is expected next week, bringing yet more rain and the chance of one of the wettest Aprils on record, after the driest March for 59 years.

At the halfway point for the month 41.7mm, had fallen, 60 per cent of what would normally be expected. The average UK rainfall for April is 69.6mm.

The wettest April on record was in 2000 when 120.3mm fell and the tenth rainiest year on record was 96.7mm in 1961, meaning this year has a chance of being in the top ten.

Over the next few days up to 30mm could fall in the worst-hit areas in Dorset, Hampshire, the Midlands, and Wales.

It is certainly wetter than last year, the driest April on record, when just 13mm fell.

It is also cooler than usual. The normal maximum average temperature for April is 13C in the South East and 11C in Scotland. But over the next week it will be around 10C in the South East and 8C in Scotland.

Dave Britton, of the Met Office, said there could be localised flooding caused by the thundery downpours.

The Environment Agency has already warned that flash floods could be worse than usual because the ground is so dry because of the drought.

He said it was too early to say if the month as a whole will break records, although it will be cooler and wetter than normal.

“It will take more than one month of above average rainfall to alleviate some of the very dry conditions we have experienced over the last 24 months in some parts of the country,” he said.

At this time of year most of the rain is sucked up by growing plants or evaporates because it is warm. The Environment Agency say that months of rain is needed to refill aquifers and reservoirs. Groundwater supplies, that feed rivers and mains supplies, usually rely on prolonged winter rainfall to fill up.

South Pole hits minus 100F mark earliest ever in the winter

The moon rises over the South Pole Telescope on April 5, a couple of days before the temperature plunged below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit on April 7 (local time), the earliest it had reached the mark. Photo Credit: Carlos Pobes/Antarctic Photo Library

antarcticsun.usap.gov | Apr 20, 2012

By Peter Rejcek

It’s no secret that the South Pole in Antarctica is one of the coldest places on Earth.

But this year it got really cold faster than ever, breaking a 30-year-old record for the earliest the temperature has dropped below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 73.3 degrees Celsius).

The mercury officially bottomed out at minus 100.1F (minus 73.4C) on April 7 (local time), less than three weeks after the one sunset of the year that occurs at the bottom of the world. Previously, the earliest the temperature had broken the minus 100F barrier was on April 8, 1982 (local time), plummeting down to minus 103.4F (minus 75.2C).

“Climatology shows that it isn’t as atypical as one would think,” said South Pole Station External Non-U.S. government site senior meteorologist Dale Herschlag.
Screen shot of weather data.

Herschlag said that there have been eight instances where the station has reached the minus 100F milestone in the month of April, with another 13 “close calls,” when the temperature was just a degree or two shy of the mark.

On average, the station typically experiences the first minus 100F day by May. The coldest months are June and July, according to Herschlag. The coldest day ever recorded at the South Pole was on June 23, 1982, hitting minus 117F (minus 82.8C). The average annual temperature is about minus 58F (minus 50C). Climate records at the South Pole began in 1957.

“For the most part, the pattern that set up last week was typical for minus 100F readings,” Herschlag explained. “Typically, in order to get that cold, we would need grid easterly winds for a sustained period of 24-48 hours at a minimum.

“This pushes the pool of coldest continental air from the Antarctic plateau into the South Pole,” he added. “We had been predominantly in the upper 80s to around 90 below zero F for almost a week leading up to this event.”

The record comes less than four months after an altogether different mark was set at the South Pole during the austral summer.

On Christmas Day, the temperature officially hit 9.9F (minus 12.3C) at about 3:50 p.m., to become the warmest day ever at the South Pole. That had shattered the old record of 7.5F (minus 13.6C) set on Dec. 27, 1978. [See previous article — Heat wave: South Pole hits record high temperature on Christmas Day.]

Herschlag said that it is not entirely uncommon to have such wild swings in Antarctica during seasonal transitions. In March, temperatures were actually about three degrees Celsius above normal, with three daily maximum temperature records broken. It was also extremely windy, with peak wind speeds knocking down six daily records during the month.

In fact, just last September, another significant record fell when the peak wind speed was clocked at 58 miles per hour (mph), or 50 knots — the strongest ever at the South Pole. The previous record of 55mph (48kts) was set on Aug. 24, 1989. [See previous article — Windy days: Pole storms bring record-breaking gusts in September.]

The minus 100F barrier also marks the time when Polies wintering over get an opportunity to join the exclusive 300 Club. Membership involves sweating it out in a sauna at 200F for as long as possible and then making a quick trip to the geographic South Pole — all while wearing not much more than a pair of boots.

Herschlag said about a dozen of the 50 winter-overs joined the club for the couple of hours while the temperature fluctuated at the membership level.

US Marine Fighter Squadron Switches To Knights Templar “Crusader” Logo Used by Norway Killer

“Crusader” Mentality Shared by U.S. Military, Norwegian Extremist

scoop.co.nz | Apr 20, 2012

 

The insignia for the VMFA-122 "Crusaders" that was used from 1957-2008. The name and symbols were changed to Werewolves for four years, but the historic nicname and symbols were recently reinstated.

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO – Does the U.S. Military think it’s engaged in a holy war? The constitutionalist watchdogs at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) are asking this question following the recent decision to rename Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122 (VMFA-122) the “Crusaders” and adopt the red cross of the medieval Knights Templar.

As the dust in Afghanistan settles following weeks of violence resulting from the burning of the Qu’ran at Bagram Air Base, resulting in 30 dead and the death of six Americans, the decision to rechristen the jet fighter squadron as Crusaders threatens to reignite passions across the Muslim world. Meanwhile, the same red cross was heavily utilized in the video “manifesto” of Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who claims to have carried out his gruesome attacks for the sake of advancing a “crusade” against multiculturalism and European Muslims. Breivik, who is currently standing trial for his gruesome attacks that claimed the lives of 77 people, claims allegiance to a network called the “Knights Templar” and has stated that he aspires to a “crusader” mentality. The Knights Templar was a Christian military order that participated in bloody campaigns across the Middle East, wearing white uniforms emblazoned with a red cross.

This same red cross has now been re-adopted as the logo for Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122. Confidential MRFF sources have confirmed that VMFA-122 F/A-18 Hornet jets have been repainted to reflect last month’s name change. Base commanders have confirmed that the new artwork is identical to that shown in images from 2004 which have been uncovered online, which depict designs on the tails of the Hornets displaying a white teardrop-shaped medieval “kite shield” bearing the red Knights Templar cross against an Old Glory Blue backdrop.

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Civil rights group objects to Beaufort squadron’s name change

Group blasts Marine Corps for reviving Knights Templar Crusaders name and symbols

In 2008, VMFA-122, based out of Beaufort, South Carolina, was renamed the “Werewolves” after having borne the “Crusaders” label since 1958. With United States service personnel based across the Arab and Islamic world, the “Crusaders” name was dropped due to its clearly incendiary and offensive nature. At the time, Lt. Col. William Lieblein stated “The notion of being a crusader in that part of the world doesn’t float.”

“Crusader” is an epithet that is routinely used to describe U.S. service personnel throughout the Arab and Islamic world. A phrase with deeply resonant connotations in the region, “Crusader” recalls a history of colonization and a campaign of conquest and plunder spearheaded by European Christian military orders that claimed the lives of millions of inhabitants throughout the Middle East. In March 2012, Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri referred to International Security Assistance Force troops stationed in Afghanistan as “Crusader Swine”. During last year’s NATO intervention in Libya, then-leader Muammar Gaddafi referred to Western forces as a “crusader alliance.” Likewise, insurgent forces in Iraq have regularly called U.S. personnel “crusaders.”

However, on the occasion of the squadron’s 70th anniversary in March, present commander Lt. Col. Wade Wiegel stated that the “Crusader” label was “not politically incorrect”, according to a story broken by the Beaufort Gazette. According to Wiegel, “It’s a way for our Marines to draw on the service of the Marines before them, and to make their own history under the same name… the name change is a reflection of our heritage.”

Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, president and founder of the four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominated MRFF, blasted the decision to rename the Werewolves, stating that “It will absolutely serve as a priceless propaganda bonanza of jovian magnitude for our nation’s fundamentalist Islamic foes and, thus, represents a veritable national security threat to the United States of America. Likewise, it will incontrovertibly, directly and indirectly hasten the maiming and deaths of our armed forces members.”

Just under one hundred U.S. Marines, the vast majority of whom are Christians who wish to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, contacted Weinstein after the renaming was brought to light. One “Crusader”, a member of VMFA-122, expressed his disgust and confided that he expected MRFF, an organization that represents over 27,000 clients within the U.S. armed forces (approximately 96% of whom are Christian), “to do something about this”.

Many Christian fundamentalist extremists endorse the idea of a new crusade, believing that it fulfills biblical prophecies. In August 2001, Protestant prophecy magazine The Philadelphia Trumpet published an article opening with the lines “Most people think the crusades for Jerusalem are a thing of the past—over forever. They are wrong. Preparations are being made for a final crusade, and it will be the bloodiest of all!” Immediately following the attacks on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush raised the hackles of European allies after referring to “This crusade, this war on terrorism”.

MRFF holds that much of U.S. Military doctrine has been tainted by supernatural theological concepts and a “Clash of Civilizations”, “us vs. them” ideology which warps order, discipline, and servicemember morale. The latest news of the “Crusader” renaming comes hot on the heels of recent controversies in Afghanistan involving brazen religious and cultural insensitivities by U.S. forces which have dramatically enflamed tensions in the region. These incidents have included the display of a Nazi Waffen-SS banner by U.S. Marine Corps Scout Snipers, a video of Marines urinating on dead irregular fighters, the widespread phenomenon of “Pork-Eating Infidel” patches worn by U.S. service personnel (which feature uniformed Templar knight crusaders), and the mass-burning of Qu’rans by U.S. forces at Bagram Air Base.

Eyeless shrimp and mutant fish raise concerns over BP use of Corexit

Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause. (Al Jazeera / YouTube)

‘Eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills….’

– Darla Rooks, Louisiana fisher

Fox News | Apr 18, 2012

NEW ORLEANS –  Eyeless shrimp, fish with oozing sores and other mutant creatures found in the Gulf of Mexico are raising concerns over lingering effects of the BP oil spill.

On April 20, 2010, an explosion aboard the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 people and spewed an estimated 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf, in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Two years later, scientists and commercial fishers alike are finding shrimp, crab and fish that they believe have been deformed by the chemicals unleashed in the spill, according to an extensive report by Al Jazeera English.

“At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” Tracy Kuhns, a commercial fisher from Barataria, La., told Al Jazeera, showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

Darla Rooks, another lifelong fisher from Port Sulfur, La., told the broadcaster she was seeing “eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills.”

Rooks added that she had never seen such deformities in Gulf waters in her life — a refrain common to most fishers featured in the report — and said her seafood catch last year was “ten percent what it normally is.”

A survey led by the University of South Florida after the spill found that between two and five percent of fish in the Gulf now have skin lesions or sores, compared to data from before the spill, when just one-tenth of one percent of fish had any growths or sores.

Scientists blamed the mutations on the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) released from the spill’s submerged oil as well as the two million gallons of the dispersant Corexit that BP used in an attempt to clean up the spill.

“The dispersants used in BP’s draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber,” Riki Ott, a toxicologist and marine biologist explained to Al Jazeera. “It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known.”

BP has maintained that Gulf seafood is safe, saying in a statement, “Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident.”

On Wednesday BP sealed an out-of-court, $7.8 billion settlement with lawyers acting on behalf of thousands of individuals and businesses affected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Under the deal, the Gulf seafood industry is slated to receive over $2 billion for economic loss.

The TSA’s mission creep is making the US a police state

A TSA ‘viper’ (VIPR) team patrolling mass transit

The out-of-control Transportation Security Administration is past patdowns at airports – now it’s checkpoints and roadblocks

Guardian | Apr 21, 2012

by Jennifer Abel

Ever since 2010, when the Transportation Security Administration started requiring that travelers in American airports submit to sexually intrusive gropings based on the apparent anti-terrorism principle that “If we can’t feel your nipples, they must be a bomb”, the agency’s craven apologists have shouted down all constitutional or human rights objections with the mantra “If you don’t like it, don’t fly!”

This callous disregard for travelers’ rights merely paraphrases the words of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano, who shares, with the president, ultimate responsibility for all TSA travesties since 2009. In November 2010, with the groping policy only a few weeks old, Napolitano dismissed complaints by saying “people [who] want to travel by some other means” have that right. (In other words: if you don’t like it, don’t fly.)

But now TSA is invading travel by other means, too. No surprise, really: as soon as she established groping in airports, Napolitano expressed her desire to expand TSA jurisdiction over all forms of mass transit. In the past year, TSA’s snakelike VIPR (Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have been slithering into more and more bus and train stations – and even running checkpoints on highways – never in response to actual threats, but apparently more in an attempt to live up to the inspirational motto displayed at the TSA’s air marshal training center since the agency’s inception: “Dominate. Intimidate. Control.”

Anyone who rode the bus in Houston, Texas during the 2-10pm shift last Friday faced random bag checks and sweeps by both drug-sniffing dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs (the latter being only canines necessary if “preventing terrorism” were the actual intent of these raids), all courtesy of a joint effort between TSA VIPR nests and three different local and county-level police departments. The new Napolitano doctrine, then: “Show us your papers, show us everything you’ve got, justify yourself or you’re not allowed to go about your everyday business.”

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee praised these violations of her constituents’ rights with an explanation asinine even by congressional standards:

“We’re looking to make sure that the lady I saw walking with a cane … knows that Metro cares as much about her as we do about building the light rail.”

See, if you don’t support the random harassment of ordinary people riding the bus to work, you’re a callous bastard who doesn’t care about little old ladies.

No specific threats or reasons were cited for the raids, as the government no longer even pretends to need any. Vipers bite you just because they can. TSA spokesman Jim Fotenos confirmed this a few days before the Houston raids, when VIPR teams and local police did the same thing to travelers catching trains out of the Amtrak station in Alton, Illinois. Fotenos confirmed that “It was not in response to a specific threat,” and bragged that VIPR teams conduct “thousands” of these operations each year.

Still, apologists can pretend that’s all good, pretend constitutional and human rights somehow don’t apply to mass transit, and twist their minds into the Mobius pretzel shapes necessary to find random searches of everyday travelers compatible with any notion that America is a free country. “Don’t like the new rules for mass transit? Then drive.”

Except even that doesn’t work anymore. Earlier this month, the VIPRs came out again in Virginia and infested the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, also known as the stretch of Interstate 64 connecting the cities of Hampton and Norfolk. Spokesmen admitted again that the exercise was a “routine sweep”, not a response to any specific threat. Official news outlets admitted the checkpoint caused a delay (further exacerbated by a couple of accidents), but didn’t say for how long. Local commenters at the Travel Underground forums reported delays of 90 minutes.

I grew up in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia. When I was a kid, my dad crossed the bridge-tunnel every day while commuting to work. When I was in university, I did the same thing. The old conventional wisdom said “Get to the airport at least two hours early, so TSA has time to violate your constitutional rights before boarding.” What’s the new conventional wisdom – “Leave for any destination at least 90 minutes early, so TSA can violate your rights en route”?

Airports, bus terminals, train stations, highways – what’s left? If you don’t like it, walk. And remember to be respectfully submissive to any TSA agents or police you encounter in your travels, especially now that the US supreme court has ruled mass strip-searches are acceptable for anyone arrested for even the most minor offence in America. If you’re rude to any TSA agent or cops, you risk being arrested on some vague catch-all charge like “disorderly conduct”. Even if the charges are later dropped, you’ll still undergo the ritual humiliation of having to strip, squat, spread ’em and show your various orifices to be empty.

Can I call America a police state now, without being accused of hyperbole?

Report: Sex Robots Replace Prostitutes In 2050

allmediany.com | Apr 20, 2012

by Stephanie Ortiz

Male and female “real dolls” at the Museum of Sex in NYC (Image Source: Atypique.ca)

While numerous movies and books have come out, predicting human life interacting with robots, robots doing daily chores, or even robots taking over the world, a more recent study has indicated robots will take the role of sex workers in Amsterdam clubs and brothels in order to ensure a safe, disease-free locale for people to enact their desires.

In the research paper Robots, Men, and Sex Tourism, Ian Yeoman and Michelle Mars of the Victoria Management School in Wellington, New Zealand, wrote about a visionary brothel in Amsterdam’s red light district called Yub-Yum, predicting life in 2050.

Yeoman and Mars believe the future will give way to an increase in sex trafficking and an outbreak of incurable sexually transmitted diseases, drawing people towards androids “made of bacteria-resistant fiber” instead of humans. Hundreds of robots “of different ethnicity, body shapes, ages, languages and sexual features” will hang out in Amsterdam clubs, providing “all inclusive service,” including lap dances and intercourse for around $10,000.

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“Amsterdam’s red light district will all be about android prostitutes who are clean of sexual transmitted infections, not smuggled in from Eastern Europe and forced into slavery,” Yeoman wrote in the paper. “The city council will have direct control over android sex workers controlling prices, hours of operations and sexual services.”

The new sex industry will also lure more tourists but eradicate many of the problems associated with prostitution, such as drug use and violence. While these are great things to have minimized and controlled, wouldn’t promiscuous sex with a robot lead to other dangers?

In addition, clients will “feel guilt free as they actually haven’t had sex with a real person and therefore don’t have to lie to their partner.” Although, we’re not sure how comforting it would be to have a partner tell us they’d rather have sex with a robot than us or a person…

Sure, many websites boast having a robot or doll to sexually play with, but to have them roaming the clubs and regulated by a city council seems a tad creepy